IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Prince George's County citizens and police officers gathered yesterday to bury young Antonio Martinez Kelsey, the first black county police officer killed in the line of duty.

Kelsey, 22, was fatally shot Saturday night as he chased a suspect outside a Landover liquor store. "In police work, the only word we have for greatness is good," Kelsey's closest friend, county officer Bill Stott, said at the memorial service. "He was good."

Hundreds of police cruisers formed a motorcade from the church service in Southeast Washington to the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland where Kelsey was buried.

On its way the cemetery the motorcade passed the Seat Pleasant Police Station, where Kelsey had worked since December 1978.

Then, as the seemingly endless string of police cruisers passed, a group of neighborhood youths also saluted.

As hundreds of police officers clustered in the chill air at the cemetery for a short service, county Police Chief John E. McHale Jr. presented Carol Kelsey with the American flag that had been draped over her son's coffin.